YouBot robots have learned to ask for help from people

As part of the new project, a team of specialists from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) trained robots to ask for help from people. In this case, the robot first identifies its problem, and then asks the person to help. YouBot robots were selected for the project, and they were modernized in such a way that these devices assemble furniture from IKEA. Of course, for a robot, assembling furniture is not an easy task, and devices often have to stop asking for help from a person.

There are a lot of reasons why the robot can ask for help. This is a highly located part, necessary for assembly, and some problems with the assembly itself. The project team was able to train robots to identify emerging problems, so that, asking for help, the robot could "tell" to the person what exactly is needed from him, the person.

According to the authors of the project, youBot can now ask to file this or that piece of furniture (of a certain color), or to help assemble some component. The most interesting thing is that the requests are not submitted in the form of flashing LEDs, or there is a message on the display. Help is requested by voice. Among other things, robots are trained to identify even those problems that they have not encountered before, that is, devices are self-learning.

Of course, the project itself is not entertainment. With it, developers hope to get a reliable problem identification system for robots that work in production. Having stopped, such a robot will be able to inform the operator what kind of problem has arisen, identifying this problem with a high degree of reliability.



Via ieee.org